Final Destination: San Diego

Driving Audio Tour

I go out to the hotel bar to get yoghurt and granola bites. The latter apparently go on the oatmeal they serve but they should work for my breakfast. I take my juice and banana out with me but after a minute or so it’s already way too hot even under the bar’s sunshade. I retreat back inside my air-conditioned bedroom to eat breakfast.

I’m doing the app-based Palm Springs Self-Guided Driving Audio Tour before I leave town. Checked out of the hotel by 10 am, the app offers an option to guide me to the tour’s starting point. I accept, but it doesn’t work. Good start, eh? The Visitor Center is about five miles away according to Maps.

I arrive at the Center but it is very difficult to work out how to get the tour started on the app. More by luck than judgement, somehow after a few minutes it sparks into life. The first part of the tour takes me to various houses owned by celebrities of past years, such as Frank Sinatra and Elvis Presley.

After a while it becomes clear, not unexpectedly if you think about it, that most of the houses are hidden away behind tall hedges, gates or walls. You don’t, as a result, see a lot of actual houses. The audio commentary fills in with an average of 90 seconds of talk about each celebrity’s life whilst you stare at a hedge or fence. It then guides you to the next house, and repeat.

Nothing Special, City or App

Somehow I thought Palm Springs had some special architectural merit. The Tour promotes the city’s “architectural marvels”. But I didn’t see anything special and the app didn’t take me anywhere that was a “marvel”. Once the celebrity houses are done with, I’m routed out of town, destination unknown. I’m directed to keep driving but I’m getting bored. There is no information forthcoming as to where I’m heading. By now I’m miles away from the center of town.

I stop and skip the app ahead a bit and find that Sinatra’s grave is my next stop, just up ahead. After that it appears the tour ends in Coachella miles further down the road. I decide to skip that. But as I’m nearly there now, I do visit the grave.

There is not a lot to see from the car. The commentary makes the point that Sinatra’s grave is not grand in any way, it’s “a simple one” and rather non-descript. The same as all the other graves in fact. I’m not a fan of his so don’t bother to get out of the car for a closer look.

I kill the app and start to drive back into town. I feel somewhat misled. The Tour was ‘only’ $17 so not too bad and whilst the first part did as advertised in visiting the houses, the fact you could see hardly anything made it all rather pointless. As for the second part, it was just a long drive that I got fed up with. I really don’t recommend doing the Tour.

“Don’t believe the hype” *

I pull into a Circle K gas station and buy a sandwich. When I picked the car up I rather foolishly – in hindsight – agreed to a new fuel option for the rental car. Instead of returning the car full of fuel, you can now return it empty and Hertz will ‘only’ charge you $4.55 a gallon to fill it up. (I could have opted to do the usual return the tank full but this seemed a better option – it wasn’t, for many reasons.)

The Seattle rental lady was very persuasive in noting that I was going to southern California. She said that “gas is going to be way more expensive down there.” She claimed their $4.55 was much cheaper than I would pay at a gas station there. I know California is more expensive than Washington or Oregon and she quoted me a figure of $5.50 a gallon in San Diego.

Big mistake on my part. Never succumb to the sales pitch at the rental desk is a mantra I thought I’d learnt by now. Obviously not. The first problem I identified was trying to work out how much gas to leave in the tank and not run dry before dropping the car back. This was really tricky to try and calculate.

I thought I sussed it out with a nine gallon top-up in Lake Havasu City. I calculated this should give me enough gas to get to San Diego airport ‘nearly’ empty, given how many miles I thought I had left to drive. But what I didn’t know then was how many miles the Audio Tour was, nor what my Miles Per Gallon rate would be across the different terrains in between. As it transpired, the Tour was longer than I expected and my MPG dropped for some reason over the coming days.

So I now needed more gas as I knew I didn’t have enough to get to San Diego. At least not without a potentially perilous last few miles. Not worth a chance as I didn’t know if there would be any gas stations on today’s route over the mountains. And if my MPG fluctuated again today, I still might need yet another small top-up. It became a nightmare trying to work out how much I needed to put in.

“You had something to hide” **

But the downright underhand – nay, devious – ploy of rental woman was that she omitted to tell me that the $4.55 per gallon she quoted EXCLUDED sales tax. When I reviewed the receipt a few days after leaving Seattle I discovered there was 17.9% of tax added to the $4.55. This meant that gas in San Diego would have to be more than $5.38 if I was to benefit financially from the ‘deal’. From prices I’d seen so far in California it shouldn’t be that expensive in San Diego.

As a fast forward to close this topic off now, gas in most towns near San Diego was $4.20 to $4.30. Way cheaper than Hertz’ non-tax cost. If I’d needed the usual small final top-up just before drop-off at San Diego airport, when I got there I saw Mobil and Chevron stations selling at $4.89.

So Mobil and Chevron at the airport proved that Hertz’ ‘deal’ was anything but. As I pulled into the rental garage I had 62 miles left in the tank. This equated to about two gallons at my average MPG over the whole trip. So I suppose that wasn’t too bad for an ’empty’ tank. But I certainly won’t be taking such a ‘return tank empty’ option again. Live and learn.

Up Into the San Jacinta Mountains

So it’s my last day driving on the road. I will drop the car off at my final destination, San Diego, before spending a couple of days in the city. Out of Circle K I head out of town and then take a right turn onto CA-74 W and drive up into the San Jacinta Mountains. At the gas station it was 109º F / 42º C at noon but 15 minutes later it is 113º F / 45º C! The road is quite twisty and turn-y. I stop briefly at the Coachella Valley Vista Point for some photos. Nice view.

Coachella Valley Vista Point panorama

The road is called the Palms to Pines Scenic Byway. Some miles later I turn left onto CA-371 W, then onto CA-795 W, followed by CA-785 W and finally, for the drag to San Diego International Airport where I drop off the car, it’s I-15 S. The drive is pleasant enough, nice scenery, mountains as a backdrop, green and yellow fields but there’s little to excite the driving taste buds today.

Chevy Malibu

I get to the airport at 3.45 pm and drop the car off. This year for the first time in many, I did not have any car trouble so that’s a blessing. I drove 2770 miles exactly, averaging 34.8 MPG. There’s a taxi rank right outside the rental car drop off return, so thankfully no shuttle buses to ferry me to a terminal. The taxi arrives at the Horton Grand Hotel in San Diego’s Gaslamp Quarter right on 4 pm, when check-in opened.

Gaslamp Quarter in San Diego

It is a grand old hotel for sure. Lots of dark wood, very little that is modern. I’d researched a supermarket beforehand just up the road. Ralph’s provides me with what I need for the next two days breakfast when I walk there later.

Around 7.45 pm I leave to walk a block or two to Nason’s Beer Hall. There a Padres vs. Dodgers baseball play-off game on TV. The Padres are winning 8-1 but there are still a few innings left. The bar has a number of Padres fans in it, and there is much whooping and shouting when two more runs are scored. The Padres run out 10-2 winners.

I have an Eppig Festbier to drink, a local Oktoberfest brew, and some Confit Bone-In Wings with Buffalo and Ranch sauce. All was very good. The barman chats to me a little later on as he lived in England for a while. The end of SNF with the Cowboys and Steelers is also on TV. I watch that and do some diary.

So the road trip has ended and I now have two days to look around San Diego. Today was average. The Palm Springs Tour a waste of time to be honest. It was however a reasonable scenic drive and a pleasant evening in the bar to finish.

* Don’t Believe the Hype by Public Enemy

** Policy of Truth by Depeche Mode